City of Heroes - Subscription

Subscription

As in a few other MMORPGs, players must subscribe to City of Heroes by paying the publisher (NCsoft) a monthly fee to continue playing City of Heroes. Portions of the subscription costs go to supporting a full-time "live" team, which develops additional content for the game; other portions support the significant server maintenance and bandwidth costs. The subscription fee after Issue 6 covered play in either of the games in the "City of" franchise or both of them at once for the same cost, however, since merging the titles in 2008 this became a moot point as any player of one of the games could access the opposite game without purchasing it.

Continuing active subscriptions are also entitled to "Veteran Rewards". The system rewards players with costume pieces, extra powers, supergroup base items, respec opportunities, and other minor in-game perks to all characters (both hero and villain characters) on any server tied to the active subscription. Inactive accounts do not accrue time for Veteran Rewards.

Since 2009, players considering City of Heroes can sign up for a 14-day trial key without subscribing to the game, without receiving an in-game referral or using a credit card. Certain features, such as chat, trade, membership in groups, and leveling up are restricted to prevent exploitative players/groups from using trial accounts to further Real Money Trade activities that NCSoft prohibits in-game. After 14 days expire, a trial player would need to buy the game and subscribe for further months to continue their play.

As of September 2008, City of Heroes had around 124,939 subscribers in the US & Europe, according to financial reports released by NCsoft in November 2008.

On June 20, 2011, City of Heroes announced the City of Heroes: Freedom subscription model, which was implemented in September 2011. The servers are free-to-play, with limitations on what Free players can access. Players who have had subscriptions lapse will become Premium players, and will have access to everything they used to have, but will be limited to what they will access in the games' future updates unless they sign up for a VIP subscription. The VIP subscription adds free access to the Going Rogue game content, and a monthly VIP Rewards system (as opposed to the quarterly releases of the Veteran Rewards). There will also be an in-game shop where all players can purchase points to purchase expansions to the game; VIP subscribers will be given a monthly stipend of these points at no extra charge.